


Hell in a Handbasket

by orphan_account



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family, Family Angst, Family Fluff, Minor Character Death, No Lucifer, pre-Lucifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 13:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19020649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A story focussed on Chloe before she met Lucifer, from her birth and early childhood to her career as an actress, and leading up to right before she meets the Devil.





	Hell in a Handbasket

**Author's Note:**

> I've noticed that a lot of fanfiction out there focusses on Lucifer - which is great, don't get me wrong! But I thought it might be interesting to write something based solely around a different character, and Chloe seemed like the best fit for that. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Thank you so much to [TheYahwehDance](https://theyahwehdance.tumblr.com/) for all her help with this!

After four years of trying, John and Penelope Decker had mostly given up on having a child, or at least of having a child of their own. During the first few years of their marriage, Penelope had had one devastating miscarriage, and after that, there was nothing. Of course, they’d gone to doctors, but there didn’t seem to be anything _wrong_. It just seemed as if the universe had decided that they were not destined to have children.

When Penelope, exhausted after a day of shooting for one of the cheesy movies that would boost her career as an actress, told a strange man about it over her second – or was it third? – glass of beer in a dingy bar, she thought nothing of it. The man was kind, and when he brushed a hand against her shoulder and stated that, “everything will work out as it should”, she believed him, for some reason. But she chalked that up to the alcohol still in her system and the fact that the man seemed like he genuinely believed it, and put it out of her mind.

When she started feeling sick to her stomach for no apparent reason, she didn’t quite believe it at first. Even when she drove to a nearby drugstore and bought a pregnancy test, she was still trying to remind herself that it was probably nothing. After all, what could possibly make this happen, after all the time they’d spent doing everything they could to have a baby?

She nearly dropped the pregnancy test when it came up positive, her hands shaking. Then she called John.

He was at work, and didn’t pick the phone up the first time, so she called again, wanting to tell him right away, not through a message.

“Hey, sweetheart. Is everything okay?” She tried to answer, but the words stuck in her throat. Of course John assumed something was wrong, since she never called when he was on duty. She couldn’t find the words to tell him what had happened, though. “Penny? What’s wrong?” He’d gone into police officer mode, his voice worried as he tried to figure out why she wasn’t answering, and she couldn’t have that, not when it was such a very, very good thing.

“I’m pregnant, John.” There was a long, long pause, and she let out a short laugh, the noise clogged with some bittersweet mix of absolute joy and terror. “I’m _pregnant._ ”

There was a muffled, choked noise that she would have missed if she hadn’t known him so well. She did know him, though, and she knew he was forcing back tears, not wanting to show too much in the precinct, where open displays of emotion were more than looked down upon. The tears made sense; he’d wanted children so badly, ever since she’d met him, and she knew how happy he’d be to hear the news. Of course, she wanted a child, too, very much, but… It was more important to him, because he’d always known he’d wanted one. Always knew he wanted to get to be a father.

They talked for a while, and then he had to go back to work, but he promised to bring home food from their favorite restaurant in celebration. He didn’t have enough seniority in the LAPD to feel secure asking to go home early, though she knew he wanted to. When he finally came home at the end of the day, he dropped the bag of food on the table and gathered her up into a hug, and she laughed, glad to see him so happy.

Their lives changed a lot after that. Penelope had to stop acting when the bump started to show, and she kept up the appearance that she didn’t mind. She knew she should be as happy as John, and really, she was, but… But she loved acting. It made her feel like she could be, and could do, anything, and so she missed it.

Besides, her husband, as sweet and supportive as he was, didn’t have to actually be pregnant. She never quite realized just how much the whole process sucks sometimes. Between the morning sickness that seemed to be happy to strike at any random time during the day, the sudden cravings, the constant aches and pains, her swollen feet and ankles, the kicking and elbowing that came a little later on in the pregnancy but was no less frustrating, especially when she was trying to sleep, and everything else that made her feel awful, she was just about ready to cut the baby out of her by the time she went into labor 

Then the baby was born, and it made up for all of it, because she was perfect.

Chloe Jane Decker was a miracle.

In the literal sense, yes, but to her parents, who of course knew nothing about the divinity of the strange black man Penelope Decker had spoken to once, whom she had forgotten about entirely at that point, their daughter was a miracle in the conventional, human sense. And, more importantly, she was _their_ miracle.

* 

John seemed to know, without needing to be told or instructed at all, how to talk to his daughter, and the little girl loved him for it. Which isn’t to say that Penelope didn’t pamper the child – and really, the opposite could be said – but even though she was around Chloe more often, she also wasn’t quite as much of a natural as her husband.

Chloe had shown little interest in walking at first, and while many of their friends liked to brag about how their children had started some number of weeks before expected, Penelope and John didn’t push her. One day, though, when her father was home, Chloe had crawled over to where John sat, watching what she was doing with a proud smile, and started to tug at the leg of his pants.

“Hey! What’s up, Chlo?” Looking down at her, he grinned at the happy little trill she made in response. She kept tugging, though, and after a few moments of hesitation, she started, slowly, to pull herself up onto her feet. It didn’t last long, her balance too unstable, and she fell back, but he praised her nonetheless, and kneeled down to play with her.

The next day, it happened again. And then again the next day, and the next, and each time resulted in a bit more time spent standing up. The fourth time it happened, he leant down and ruffled her thin blonde hair. “You’re really are a little monkey, aren’t you?” After all, if she was going to use his leg as a makeshift jungle gym, the name fit. Her smile was blindingly brilliant, and as she started walking and exploring as much as possible, the increasingly fitting nickname stuck.

There were other things like that, too, especially when she was very young. Like how, when he came home from work, she rushed over to tell him about her day at preschool, excited to share everything about what she’d done. Each time, he sat while she talked, asking questions and wholeheartedly engaging in the conversation.

Her mother, though, was a different story. She loved Chloe, of course, but that might have been where the problems started, because Penelope wanted to show her daughter off. So when the little girl was old enough, though still arguably too young, her mother started dressing her up and taking her along to auditions.

At first, Chloe loved it. She got to get dressed up in pretty dresses and jewelry, and even if the fabric made her skin itch and the makeup was uncomfortable, it was an exciting adventure, and the people doing the casting seemed to like seeing her there. Besides, after every time she went, she got ice cream at the end if she behaved well, and so she didn’t mind it too much 

The problems began when Penelope started to take her daughter out of school to go to auditions, or spent the whole day doing them. When that happened, Chloe had no time to do homework, never mind rest or play the way a little girl should. After a few times of that happening, the rush to catch up on things started to get annoying, as did the boredom with the whole affair, and Chloe started to fight back.

“Okay, sweetheart, we’re going to get you all ready for mommy’s audition, okay?” her mother would say, handing over a dress, or a hair tie, or a pair of uncomfortable shoes. And Chloe, fed up with the whole thing, stopped taking whatever was being offered.

 “I don’t want to,” she’d say, or, “I have stuff to do,” and then her mother would get angry, and they’d both be annoyed for the rest of the day.

This was one of the only things Penelope and John consistently argued over, at least from Chloe’s recollection. They were an odd pair – a B-level actress and a cop weren’t exactly the type who seemed like they would get along in a relationship – but somehow, they’d always made it work. But this particular conversation got brought up over and over again, and while her father always brought Penelope flowers after each argument, trying to make up, the fights often lasted well into the night, with them yelling at one another while Chloe, curled up in bed, tried to not listen.

When Chloe got her first role, though, the two agreed to pull her out of school. Her father was reluctant, but Penelope argued that it meant that Chloe would have more time to start her acting career, and somehow, that won. No one thought to ask what Chloe wanted, but really, being home schooled sounded like a lot more fun than going to the school where she’d been, at least at the time. 

Her first role was in a commercial. It was for a new headache medicine, and her job was to pretend to be excited when the actress playing her mother was pain free enough to play. There really wasn’t much to it, but Chloe did enjoy the scene the first few times they shot it, especially since most of the ad was just her getting to run around with toys.

But the adults in charge didn’t think it was quite right, and so they did it again, and again, changing little things every time. The fifth time around, she was tired and grumpy. By the tenth time, she broke down in tears, and didn’t stop until her mom took her home again. Then came a long, long lecture about behaving professionally on sets, and how she should be happy to get the chance to act at all. Chloe refused to talk to either of her parents for the next few days, much to her mother’s frustration and her father’s confusion.

After that, her mother decided to send her to acting classes, trying to work both on expanding her range, which was limited by her age and inexperience, and her ability to work on a set. They were every Tuesday, and they ended late, at 8 or 9pm, and by the end of them, Chloe was exhausted. But it was late enough that her father was off from work and could pick her up, and he always came bearing the gift of a Hawaiian bread sandwich. They talked on the way home, her about what her tutor had taught her earlier in the day, and him about whatever office gossip was going on. 

John never told his daughter about the actual meat of his work. He didn’t want her knowing about the terrible people out there, or the times he got called to a scene and saw someone dead, or hurt, or scared. Like most parents do, he wanted her to be happy, and in part, he was glad she showed no interest in being a police woman. It would ruin the wonder he still saw in her, and that was the last thing he wanted. 

* 

When Chloe was eighteen, she got her first big gig. Going into the audition, she was nervous, but her mother pushed her to do it, arranging for more hours in her acting class to make sure her daughter had the best chance at the role. And Chloe got it. It was for a movie called Hot Tub High School, and while it was mainly a cheap, stereotype-filled high school drama, it was her first movie.

Penelope was ecstatic. She’d never much cared for making a big deal about the roles Chloe had gotten in the past, but this was special, and so when the call came through that her daughter got the role, she bought a cake from a grocery store, set up a few streamers around the house, and waited, making sure to videotape Chloe’s reaction.

On set was the first time Chloe realized how much her homeschooling had set her apart from her peers. Most of her co-stars were around her age, and yet, there was a disconnect between them. Many of them had tried drugs and alcohol already, which was a whole part of the world she’d been mostly sheltered from, and even without that, she didn’t understand their jokes or their references, and so she stuck to herself at first, feeling lonely, and threw herself into learning her lines and her blocking. 

The first time one of them offered her a joint after filming a scene, she turned it down, surprised and slightly panicked at the fact that she was being talked to at all. Then, a few days later, her mother and her had a fight, and Chloe was pissed. So she went back to Jake, the young man, though still older than she was by a few years, who had originally offered it to her and the other main star of the film, pasted on a confident smile, and asked if she could give it a try.

He was very, very happy to give a joint to her, and also introduced her to ecstasy and beer. She hated all of them, but they seemed like they were cool, and the other teens on the set seemed to like her more when she wasn’t wound so tightly, so she kept joining in. 

One day, she came home from set drunk, and her father realized it almost immediately from the slur in her speech and the way she couldn’t quite walk straight. It was the first time he’d really been angry at her, and he tried to talk to her. He wanted her to realize why it didn’t matter if the other kids thought she was cool if the thing that changed their mind was something harmful and potentially dangerous to her health, never mind illegal.

That was also the first time she got mad at him. Up until then, her mother had always been the parent she directed most of her anger towards, but now, she was angry at both of them, and so she left the house, slamming the door, needing to get some air.

That night, she ran to Jake, who she foolishly thought of as her only real friend. Still furious, with the pull of rebellion and the looseness of drugs running through her system, she practically jumped him, and he didn’t say no.

It was sloppy, not at all like the movies, teeth crashing painfully into each other as they kissed, and he tasted like alcohol, but she didn’t care. Thankfully, she knew enough to insist he use a condom, despite his protests, but she still left his cramped apartment feeling filthy, not to mention sore, and wholly unhappy.

Two days later, she pulled her top off on camera.

* 

By the time the movie was over, she’d forgiven her father, and after its release, that was something she was more grateful for than she could ever describe. If she hadn’t, his death would have killed her.

As it was, it nearly did kill her mother. Chloe found out first, because her father was supposed to pick her up from acting class, and he was an hour late. So she started calling his phone, panic building quickly as he didn’t answer.

The fifth time she called, though, someone did pick up.

“Hello? Who is this?” The voice was female, not her father’s, and Chloe bit back something like a gasp, her own voice trembling as she responded.

“Chloe Decker. I’m John Decker’s daughter. How…” She didn’t want to ask the question, but she knew she had to. “How do you have my dad’s phone?” There was a long silence on the other side of the line, and for a moment, she thought they might have hung up on her. Then, the person cleared their throat, and sighed softly.

“Is your mother with you?”

“No, dad was… He was supposed to pick me up.” There were tears in her voice by that point, her throat clogged up with them, and she knew, distantly, that she sounded young, and scared. The woman on the other side of the line seemed to soften as she realized the same thing. 

“Chloe, right?” At Chloe’s noise of confirmation, she sighed again, sounding tired. “Your dad was shot in a robbery. I’m here with some other officers, on the scene, that’s why I have his phone.” Something in Chloe broke. Or, rather, it just went cold, as if everything inside of her froze. She couldn’t cry, couldn’t say anything, and only vaguely heard the officer suggest that she should call her mom before Chloe hung up.

She sat there, in the waiting area of her class, for a long time, while her teacher, who had stayed late to make sure the young woman got home okay, called Penelope. She could hear her mother’s voice through the speaker, her sobs, but she couldn’t feel anything, not even when they went to the station, not even when they collected her father’s things. Not even when her mother, in her sadness and horror, screamed at Chloe for being a robot for not crying.

*

The calm didn’t go away until her father’s funeral.

It was supposed to be a quiet affair. There was not supposed to be any press, just Penelope, Chloe, her grandparents on both sides, and some of her father’s closer friends. And for the first few minutes, it was. Of course, there was probably paparazzi waiting outside the graveyard, but with the help of her father’s coworkers from the precinct, most of them were kept out, giving the family the privacy to mourn.

One, though, got through. A man named Nick Hofmeister, who came crashing in, camera out, just after her father’s casket was lowered into the ground.

The fog she’d been in since she heard what had happened suddenly was gone, and the world around Chloe went sharp and in focus, too focused really, as she turned, a scream ripping through her as she lunged for him. There was no thought of anything other than a base instinct that she wanted to punish him, make him wish he’d never heard of her, make him know what she was feeling.

Her father’s best friend grabbed her after she broke the man’s camera, her hand bleeding from where it had shattered the glass of the lens, and she fought him for a moment before slumping. She was still furious, but all she could do then was sob, so hard that she could barely breathe, all of the emotion that hadn’t come up yet exploding out, and the man held her there as the reporter was dragged away, as her mother turned away.

She didn’t remember most of the trial against the man who killed her father. She just remembered anger and many, many nights crying herself to sleep, and the bittersweet relief that the man who had destroyed her family was put away and couldn’t hurt anyone else, even if the damage he had done could never be reversed.

* 

For a few months, her family fell apart. Her mother couldn’t quite get her feet under her, and so they moved into Penelope’s parents’ home. Chloe was glad, because she didn’t quite know what she was doing, either.

One thing she knew was that she didn’t want to keep doing what she had been doing. Showing her boobs in a movie wasn’t what she wanted for herself. And part of her, which she didn’t quite want to look at, blamed acting, and blamed herself, for her father’s death. To her, it seemed like if she hadn’t been at that class, or if he hadn’t been about to pick her up, he would never have been in that situation at all. It blamed her mother, too, for pushing her towards acting, though she’ll never admit that that was part of the problems in their relationship. 

So, acting was off the table. 

She tried a few things, after that, working part time jobs in retail and restaurants, though she never worked in grocery stores, after what happened to her father in one. It was a good way to get away, anyways, especially after they moved back out of her grandparents’ house. Her mother still wasn’t quite all there, and so Chloe spent a lot of her time trying to keep her together, remind her how to function. It drove a wedge further and further between the two women, with Chloe resenting Penelope for needing help, and for not being able to help her own daughter, who was hurting, too.

For a while, she spiraled. She did try dating, a few times, wondering if that would help, and quickly realized that for some reason, it just didn’t work for her. She went on dates with men from work who asked her out, and she just didn’t find them attractive. So, thinking it’s a problem with the gender of her date, she tried going on a few dates with women, and when that didn’t really do much for her either, she gave up. The people are nice, for the most part, but they just weren’t what she was looking for. Of course, she felt defective, broken, but there wasn’t much to do about that, so she pushed it down, and stopped trying, turning away invitations to go out with people.

A little under year after her father’s death, she found the box of the things he’d had on him when he died, as well as the things from his desk at work. His wallet was there, with a photo of her and her mother. His phone, battery long dead. Some spare change, which her mother had apparently never taken out of the box, though his car keys were gone. Another few photographs of her and Penelope, and one, at the bottom, with all three of them. She pulled that last photo out, and had to fight back tears at the sight of her father staring up at her.

The photo made its way to her bedside table, and she kept it close. Her father was the one person who she had admired most, and she couldn’t stop missing him. But she knew she wanted to make him proud, and so she started doing her research, and applied to a police academy as soon as she turned twenty.

Penelope wasn’t pleased. She’d expected her daughter to go right back to acting, and was terrified that Chloe would die, too, and so they fought. Chloe held her ground, though, even as they screamed at one another, and eventually got her way in the end.

*

The police academy was hard. She was one of the only women in her classes, and the other students knew that, singled her out, but she gritted her teeth and forced herself to get through it, even as she worried that it would be worse once she was actually a police officer. But eventually, she graduated, having to wait a little until she turned twenty-one, and applied to the LAPD immediately after that. 

Unlike when she’d gotten the role in Hot Tub High School, there was no cake or streamers from her mother when she got accepted to be a police officer. She was happy enough for herself, though, even if there was no one to really share that with.

Her start at her new job was rocky. The misogyny and the hazing were things she’d expected, but she hadn’t quite been prepared for how bad it was, never mind how frequent the reminders of her time as an actress were. But she did have one friend, finally, because one of the other police officers, Dan, had decided to at least do his best to take her under his wing. There was often not much he can do, but he could tell when something upset her, either in a case or with their coworkers, and she started finding consolation gifts on her desk. There was coffee that was slightly too over the top for her budget to handle at the time but that she still loved, and little pastries, and things like that.

At one point, she joked that it was like he was trying to buy her favor with food, and pretended to not notice when he flushed and mumbled something about that being stupid, and when their half hours for lunch mysteriously matched up, she didn’t say anything, because he was kind and friendly, and because she genuinely enjoyed spending time with him. And then, a full year after she started as a police officer, he asked her out.

She made up excuses. She said that she had to help her mom out with something, or that she had a family event, or that she had too much work. She didn’t say that she felt broken, that she’d never liked dating, that she didn’t know why.

Dan was persistent, though, and eventually, she forced herself to just give it a shot. And for some reason, it worked. Maybe it was because she already knew him, that they were already friends. She was comfortable with him. Either way, she enjoyed the date, and the next one, and the one after that, and realized that, for the first time, she could see herself spending her life with someone. 

He wasn’t perfect, of course. He could be self-centered to an infuriating degree, and focused so much on his career that it made her want to scream sometimes. But he was a lot better than the one other person she’d ever been with, and she loved him, not just for that, but for all of the good things about him as well.

As her relationship with him progressed, her relationship with her mother healed, or at least did so a little. Dan and her mother got along well, and so he acted like a barrier between the two of them. Even though they talked more through that, they still weren’t close, but they weren’t at each other’s throats, either, which was progress. 

Chloe and Dan ended up moving into an apartment together after six months. It was small, but it was theirs. She knew that they had moved slower than most couples, but Chloe was still nervous, even then. Part of her wanted to run, because she’d seen what losing her father did to Penelope, and she didn’t want that to happen to her. When she broke down about that one night, two weeks after they moved in together, he held her until she stopped crying, stopped panicking, and then they talked over hot chocolate. They ended up doing that a lot, early on, and she found that it helped.

Two years into their relationship, and three years after she joined the LAPD, Dan was promoted and made a detective. She was thrilled for him, and they actually went out to a restaurant for once in celebration instead of just getting take out, though they both laughed about that.

She had originally thought that she just wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps, to stay as a cop. But watching Dan start as a detective made her just a little jealous, and she couldn’t help thinking about it.

“Dan?” It was late at night, and she’d rolled over to face him, though she couldn’t tell if he was awake until he blinked his eyes open at her, tired but not asleep. For a few moments, she stayed silent, looking away as she tried to formulate her question in her head. “D’you… Do you think I could be a detective? I mean… Do you think I could do it?”

She could just barely see his expression by the stripes of moonlight that made it through their blinds, but she could feel him watching her, and smiled slightly, nervously, when he took her hand. 

“It’s not easy, Chlo.” She knew that, but she didn’t interrupt, just looked away, already feeling stupid for asking. “But I think you could do it, if that’s what you want.”

So she started working towards that, taking on more hours, trying to step outside of her comfort zone more and more. She still felt too new to the force to even try to apply to be a detective, but she did try to start laying out the building blocks to make it easier to get to that eventually.

And then Dan proposed. 

*

They got married in the spring. There was no ceremony, much to the disappointment of both of their mothers, because they both were more interested in work than in some big fancy affair where they’d both feel uncomfortable. So, one day, before work, they went in to the courthouse closest to the precinct, got married, and went right back to work, with no fuss at all. The most celebrating they did together is that they had a slightly fancier dinner that night, and Chloe’s mother did insist on having brunch. But other than that, it was a quiet affair, and most of their colleagues didn’t even know about it. 

They did discuss having children. Both of them agreed that they wanted to, at some point, but Dan hadn’t been a detective for very long and didn’t want to risk his professional image, and Chloe, only twenty-five, was worried about whether she could actually raise a child, never mind the fact that she didn’t want to turn out like her mother.

And so they put that on the back burner for a while. They both kept working, and when Chloe started applying to be a detective and saw people who were more experienced, louder, and male get promoted while she stayed a cop, Dan supported her, comforted her, and she tried to ignore the feeling that she was being patted on the head like a child who didn’t get into a sports team.

A year after they got married, Chloe got pregnant. They hadn’t been trying, at that point, but they also hadn’t been _not_ trying, and so while it came as a shock, neither of them were upset about it.

But Chloe panicked. She knew that her mother had miscarried, and she didn’t want to lose this child, so she intentionally didn’t get her hopes up. She tried distancing herself from Dan, but he, in his own bumbling, slightly clueless way, realized what she was doing and talked her out of that. Much to both of their relief, though, the pregnancy was completely normal.

*

Trixie, when she came out, was perfectly healthy, and very, very vocal. During the four months of maternity leave that Chloe took off of work, she spent every moment with her daughter, and even then, she intentionally lowered her workload and stopped taking on extra hours, so she could be with her little girl.

Of course, she couldn’t stop working altogether, and really, she didn’t want to. So, reluctantly, she asked her mother for help, on the condition that the baby wasn’t taken to any auditions. Remarkably, her mother agreed, along with practically demanding that they move into one of her houses, which the couple hesitantly agreed to. Even with that, though, Chloe still tried to spend as much time with Trixie as she possibly could.

Dan, though, seemed to do the opposite. He kept working more and more, and it often seemed like the only time she saw him was when they were having dinner together, something she insisted they always do, mainly because she wanted Trixie to grow up with both parents always present. He was still there for the little girl on days he didn’t work, though, and was attentive in the same way John had been, and so Chloe didn’t complain too much, and tries her best to put it out of her mind.

One day when she came home, briefly talking with the nanny who had been there to watch the little girl while Penelope was filming whatever her newest movie was, Chloe went to the crib where Trixie was sleeping, and smiled as her daughter opened her eyes.

“Hey, monkey.” It took her a few moments to process what she had said, and when she did, she had to sit, chest tightening. Just that word brought back memories, and she had to take a few moments for the grief to wash over her before she could pull herself back together. She knew how thrilled her father would have been to meet his granddaughter, and even though she didn’t really believe in a heaven, she hoped, prayed even, that wherever he was, John Decker knew how much she missed him, and that he could see the beautiful baby who would never meet him. 

Even though it hurt sometimes, she kept calling Trixie ‘monkey’, and when Dan picked it up, she just smiled to herself, and the hurt started to get less and less.

* 

Two years after Trixie was born, Chloe went back to seriously focusing on work. It was 2011, and an MMA fighter was killed in an apparent mugging, which she didn’t think was all that it seemed to be. It was the first case where she really pushed for being a detective, really did the work that that came along with, and she found that she liked it a lot, liked helping people in that way, rather than just being a cop.

It was also the time where they started doing Taco Tuesdays, and Trixie loved it so much that she demanded, in her broken, toddler English, that they do it again, and it became a tradition of sorts, one that also helped bring Chloe and Dan together to make something instead of a brief conversation each morning on their way to work about who would pick up takeout for dinner that night.

Even with that case under her belt as evidence that she was capable and could do the job of a detective, though, it wasn’t until three years later that she was finally promoted. She told herself that that was the best thing for her and for her family, because Trixie was older at that point, and being a detective took her away from her little girl more and more often, even as she raged about the fact that she was passed over for so long for likely stupid reasons. But even with that, she was thrilled with the new job, even if it meant more work for her and less time with Trixie, because it was what she really wanted to do.

She’d hoped that Dan would be happy for her. And he was, really, he was, but… But she could tell that there was a part of him that wasn’t pleased. She didn’t know if it was jealousy or annoyance or fear for her or something else, but something was holding him back from being as happy as she was, and she couldn’t help but resent him for it.

* 

Not everything in their relationship was bad, of course, and there was actually a lot of good. Dan was often sweet, doing random little things every once in a while, like one Mother’s Day, when she woke up to the sound of clanking dishes and the smoke alarm, as well as the accompanying smell of burnt food.

“Shh, monkey, open the window.” It was Dan’s voice, and Chloe stopped her movements to stand up and see what was happening, laying back down once the alarm stopped. A few minutes later, there was some sort of shuffling outside the door of their bedroom, and she feigned sleep, opening her eyes with a smile as her daughter set a tray of slightly burnt French toast and juice on her lap. 

“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!” Trixie looked excited, and Chloe glanced over at Dan, who smiled sheepishly.

Later, after Trixie was tucked into bed that night, they laughed over how neither Dan nor his daughter quite knew how to cook, but she was grateful for the attempt nonetheless.

They still went out on dates, too, though it was increasingly rare, as they had to clear time especially for them to have fun alone. But even so, she often felt as if they were drifting apart, and she had no idea how to fix it. 

Then Palmetto Street happened, and everything seemed to blow up. Everything had been going so well with her career, and she’d been happy for the first time in a while, but this case… She couldn’t let go of it, even when Dan raged at her over it, practically begged her to drop it. She just couldn’t.

She was hated at the precinct. Her colleagues seemed determined to make her life as hard as possible, and any friendships she might have had dissolved almost instantly. It was sad to see, but it was a startling reminder, that if these people weren’t willing to stick with her through that, they probably weren’t her real friends. But either way, work started to fall apart for her, even as she threw herself into it, to try to prove that she was still a good detective, even if she wouldn’t let go of that case. 

Exacerbated by that whole disaster, the problems she’d always had with Dan started to really push their way into their relationship. He’d always worked too much, had always stayed later than he should, taking on extra hours at the precinct instead of spending time with her and Trixie, and maybe it was the fact that she had a daughter now, but Chloe started getting angry, and got angrier still when he tried, over and over, to pressure her into dropping the case. And so they started fighting.

After one particularly bad fight, Dan left the house, slamming the door behind him so hard the building shook, and she went to check on Trixie. When she opened the door to the little girl’s room a crack, she expected her to be asleep. Instead, though, she heard crying, and rushed in, already reaching for her daughter before she had a chance to think.

“Trixie, honey, what’s wrong?” Trixie was clearly trying to muffle her crying, but when Chloe pulled her gently into a hug, the little girl broke down, her whole body shuddering as she sobbed.

“You and daddy keep fighting and I told one of my friends and she said that parents who fight hate each other and I don’t want you to hate each other!” It was word salad, and barely understandable through the tears, but Chloe got enough for her stomach to drop uncomfortably. Thinking back quickly, she could see just how often they’d been fighting, the arguments increasing in volume and in frequency over the last few months, and she was silent for a few moments before kissing her daughter’s head gently.

“Daddy and I don’t… We don’t hate each other, monkey, I promise. We just don’t always see eye to eye.”

It took a while, but she did eventually get her daughter to go to sleep, to put it out of her mind for the moment, though that peace likely couldn’t last for long. But the cold stone in Chloe’s gut didn’t go away, and when Dan came back later that night, she pretended to be asleep, thoughts racing as she remembered how it felt when she was little and her parents would fight, and an unpleasant thought started to form.

* 

That night stuck with her for a long time, something that she couldn’t quite put out of her head, and a few weeks later, when a then six-year-old Trixie went to a sleepover, Chloe dragged Dan into their living room and made him sit, her stomach tied in knots as she tried to figure out how to say what she thought needed to happen.

“I think… I think we need to spend some time apart.” There was a flash of shock and anger on his face, which she had been expecting, and her heart broke as he took a shaky breath, staring at her. She shook her head before he could talk. “Our fighting, it… Trixie’s noticed. She’s upset, and-”

“And you think us splitting up will make her any less upset?” Chloe closed her eyes, trying to figure out how to make this easier, and came up completely and utterly blank.

“I think it will be easier for her if we aren’t yelling at each other all the time.”

He started to protest again, and she winced, waiting for the next argument, but when she looked up at him again, he just looked tired. Finally, after staring away from her for a long time, Dan sighed and nodded, reluctant but resigned. “Yeah. You might be right. 

They agreed that he’ll move out. It was better for Trixie to stay in the same place, or at least they thought it was, and it was Chloe’s mom’s house, so it wasn’t as if he could stay without it getting a little awkward for everyone involved. They also agreed to go to therapy, to try to fix what had gone wrong.

Telling Trixie was the hardest part. She stayed strangely dry eyed throughout the conversation, and when they were done, she went to her room and closed the door softly. When Chloe went to check on her, though, the little girl’s eyes were red from tears, and for a moment, Chloe wondered if she was doing the right thing.

*

Dan moved out, and they did go to therapy once or twice. But then work got in the way, or one thing or another happened, and somehow, they’d gone three months without another appointment, having made barely any progress in fixing whatever was broken between them.

August rolled around, and Trixie went back to school, as Chloe tried her best to settle back into the new rhythm of being a not quite single mom.

And then a singer was killed outside a club in a shooting, and everything went to hell in a handbasket.


End file.
